Finding Skilled Supply Chain Staff

Forward-looking enterprises of all sizes are re-engineering their supply chains, implementing new processes and deploying innovative technologies in their quest to gain efficiencies and improve their performance. But the toughest challenge facing companies looking to improve their supply chains may be finding the skilled staff and experienced executives necessary to manage both their daily operations and the transformation necessary to take their supply chain performance to a higher level.

Finding Skilled Supply Chain Staff
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Forward-looking enterprises of all sizes are re-engineering their supply chains, implementing new processes and deploying innovative technologies in their quest to gain efficiencies and improve their performance. But the toughest challenge facing companies looking to improve their supply chains may be finding the skilled staff and experienced executives necessary to manage both their daily operations and the transformation necessary to take their supply chain performance to a higher level.
The demand for qualified supply chain staff continues to outstrip supply, according to industry sources, with too few candidates available to fill a growing number of positions. "We see a continued tightening in the jobs market," says Michael Birdsell, director of operations at SupplyStaff (www.supplystaff.com), a San Francisco-based division of Denali Consulting that focuses on providing staffing resources for procurement and logistics organizations.
Birdsell says that SupplyStaff has seen an increase over the past few years in demand for temporary staff to support specific projects ranging from new supply chain improvement initiatives to activities relating to mergers and acquisitions. Demand has also been up for longer-term placements to fill permanent staff and executive-level positions. "Senior management has identified supply chain as one of the last frontiers for making gains and cutting expenses," he says, "and companies are finding that they need to bring in people to support the initiatives and the changes that they are making."
Breadth of Skills Sought
Anecdotal evidence suggests that companies across a variety of sectors are seeking to bulk up their supply chain ranks. For example, Ravi M. Anupindi, an associate professor of operations and management science at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor, points to the number of job offers that students are receiving as they graduate from the various supply chain programs at colleges around the country. "Almost all of these graduates are getting three or four offers," he says, "and if everybody is getting that many offers, that means a lot of companies are not getting the people they need."
Anupindi is hoping to bring some relief to those companies coming up short in their hiring. As director of the new Master of Supply Chain Management (MSCM) program at the Ross School, he will be ushering the first class of students into the one-year curriculum beginning in January. The courses, spread over 30 credit-hours of class work, will cover manufacturing and supply operations, supply chain management, supply chain analytics, logistics, strategic sourcing, project management, IT for logistics and supply chain management, and several electives, covering operations management and other business disciplines. In addition, students go through "action-based learning" by completing a team summer project at a sponsoring company, getting hands-on experience in a real-world supply chain environment.
The variety of different courses included within the MSCM program corresponds to the broad range of skills that companies are seeking in their supply chain hires, Anupindi says. "Supply chain is the central nervous system of a global corporation," the professor says, "and the more companies globalize, the more they are going to need people who can really understand all the different sides of the business." That includes understanding many of the emerging "hot" topics in supply chain management, such as supply chain risk management, "green" supply chain and the financial supply chain. "There is no one standing today at the intersection of supply chain skills with international finance and global trade," Anupindi says. "Companies can't find people who do supply chain and who also know about finance." The program also aims to equip its supply chain grads with a basic business skills set through a "boot camp" that exposes them to the essential knowledge they'll need to operate in an enterprise environment — and to communicate effectively with senior-level executives about the supply chain and the value it brings to the business.
Change Agents in Demand
Birdsell agrees that companies are looking for staff and executive recruits who can bring specific skills to the table. He says that SupplyStaff has seen requests, for example, for executives with a global perspective and experience sourcing globally. Recently SupplyStaff handled a request from a company looking to get its IT spend under control. The company sought — and was able to find, through SupplyStaff — an IT category lead who had specific knowledge around information technology and who could help develop strategies for sourcing and contracting with IT suppliers. "People with the right mix of skills are a rare commodity," Birdsell says.
At the higher levels of supply chain management — at the director level and above — many companies are looking for executives who combine a broad understanding of general market dynamics with the ability to be "change agents," Birdsell says. Oftentimes, these companies are looking for executives who have the ability to turn reactive functional departments into proactive organizations that can bring new value to the enterprise. "There's a strong need for people with change management skills, people with the ability to implement change, take their company in a new direction and help the company's leadership think more strategically. These people need to be a part of the executive team and have input into the decisions that their companies are making."
Demand for supply chain talent seems to be running high across geographies and industries. Al Cotrone, director of career development at the Ross School, says that he has seen interest in recruiting supply chain program graduates from companies on both the East and West coasts and in the Midwest, within the United States. And he sees interest running high among a diverse set of companies in the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors. "Whether you're a business-to-consumer or business-to-business company, how you run your supply chain is essential to your organization's success," he says, "so we expect this degree to be in demand really all over." As evidence of the breadth of interest in the program, he points to the members of the Ross MSCM program's Corporate Advisory Council, which include such companies as Arrow Electronics, Booz Allen Hamilton, Borders Group, Cardinal Health, Dell, General Mills, McKinsey & Co., Ryder System and Target, among others.
The tight market conditions may be bad news for companies seeking the most talented supply chain staff and executives, but it's probably good news for those with the right mix of skills and a yen to see a fatter paycheck, according to Birdsell. "Salaries are trending upward," the recruiter says. "It's a tightening market, and companies have to pay more for talent."
Moving to the Other Side of the Desk
Supply chain executives used to buying technology to improve their own companies' operations may well want to consider moving to the other side of the desk by joining the ranks of the software and service providers offering supply chain solutions.
Sheldon Myeroff, president of Direct Recruiters, Inc., (www.directrecruiters.com), an executive search firm serving supply chain solution providers, says that his firm has seen a consistent need for qualified staff on the enabler side of the business. "We find the demand for personnel to sell these systems is very high," he says.
MPC places sales, implementation and support staff at companies that offer such solutions as auto-identification technology, including bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID), labeling and data collection systems, warehouse management systems and other supply chain technologies.
Myeroff has seen consistent demand for qualified personnel, but at the same time he doesn't see any one industry vertical as being "hotter" than any other — except for healthcare. "If you're in RFID and you have a solution for the healthcare industry, whether it be for patient monitoring or asset tracking or inventory management, those are some pretty nifty niches," Myeroff says. "The medical industry has embraced this technology, and they're running with it." As a result, providers of solutions for this sector are seeking staff with a mix of RFID skills and healthcare experience to help drive their sales.
Of course, just because you know supply chain technology, don't expect every solution provider to roll out the welcome mat. Some providers are looking to bring on talent with hands-on supply chain experience, Myeroff says, but others are seeking to hire "cross-industry" people that have very good sales skills and can learn the basics of the technology very quickly. In the healthcare sector, for example, solution providers appear more interested in recruiting people with experience selling into that industry. "There are a lot of healthcare RFID guys around, so [the solution providers] almost have to go to the medical industry to get what they want," Myeroff says. What the solution providers want, naturally, are salespeople who know or have access to the right executives to sell to within healthcare organizations.
Overall, Myeroff seems optimistic that demand will continue to be high for staff and executives at the solution providers that his company serves. "The industry is in what you would call over-employment," he says, concluding, "There aren't enough good people to go around for the jobs."
More Evidence of the Talent Crunch
Talent recruitment ranks as a top organizational issue in annual corporate survey
Continually escalating challenges in attracting and retaining good people were leading organizational concerns in 2007, and the situation is not expected to change in the next few years, according to the recently released findings from The Ken Blanchard Companies' annual Corporate Issues Survey.
In the fifth-annual Blanchard survey of training and human resources managers and corporate leaders, survey participants shared information about organizational business issues as well as top management and employee development challenges.
Respondents indicated that their most pressing issues this year include:
Competitors evolving and appearing from new sources;The feasibility of growth and expansion while facing a lack of skilled labor;The need to shore up internal leadership and management bench strength and retain top talent through succession planning to take their organizations in the right direction;Balancing these high-level internal concerns and the demands created by servicing and satisfying customers.
Recognizing that people are a key variable in being able to deliver relative to growth and customer service goals, respondents continue to place leadership development, selecting and retaining key talent, creating an engaged workforce and managerial skills as critical areas of focus. They believe that competitive advantage and success hinge on good leadership, stating that leadership drives improvement in all other areas.
Another reason leadership is a key focus is the number of employees approaching retirement. A shrinking labor pool contributes to the high cost of recruiting talented and qualified people — in both line and leadership positions.
Looking ahead with predictions for 2010, respondents said they see an increasing need to focus on selection and retention of key talent, succession planning and increasing innovation. Conversely, respondents seem to feel that issues around leadership capacity and creating an engaged workforce will be lesser areas of focus in the future.
The survey utilized a multiple-choice question format with the opportunity to provide comments with each question. Respondents were selected randomly from the Blanchard database and participated in an e-mail survey. Participants numbered 164 in 2003, 564 in 2004, 511 in 2005, and 805 in 2006. Findings for 2007 represent the feedback from 1,091 training and HR managers and leaders.
More information on the report is available at www.kenblanchard.com
author: By Andrew K. Reese




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